Turkey inflicted a stunning blow Thursday, Sept. 11 at President Barack Obama’s strategy for a broad US-led coalition for tackling and defeating the Islamic State, and the potential 11-member group which US Secretary of State John Kerry established in Jeddah that day. Ankara said its air bases would be unavailable for US-led attacks on “jihadists in Iraq and Syria.” Turkey would also “not take part in combat operations against militants.” This knocked out one of the props from under the Obama plan. The UK and Germany also said no to air strikes in Syria..

The shock Thursday, Aug. 29, of David Cameron’s parliamentary defeat, knocking America’s foremost partner, Britain, out of the coming strike against Syria, highlighted American public opposition to the operation and criticism in the top US military command. The White House stressed the US would act unilaterally. Nonetheless, the Syrian conflict continues to be covered in confusion, much of it generated by the Obama administration’s conflicting policies. The breakdown of Obama’s coalition for Syria strikes at the heart of NATO and undermines US prestige in the Middle East.

Shortly after DEBKA aired a special video on the Syrian war’s widening circle, Moscow announced Wednesday June 26, the evacuation beginning Friday of all Russian military and diplomatic personnel from Syria was complete, including its naval base at Tartus.

The two Islamist terrorists who hacked a British soldier to death on a London street Wednesday, May 22, chanting Allahu Akbar, were born in Britain of Nigerian descent and known to British security authorities. Motivated by revenge for Moslem deaths in Afghanistan, they selected as their victim a British soldier.

Britain and France have for the first time parted ways with the US on its policy against sending Western arms to Syrian rebels fighting Bashar Assad. As the EU summit in Brussels voted March 14 against their motion to lift the Syrian arms embargo, debkafile reveals that Jordan’s top soldier arrived in Brussels to discuss shipping British arms through his country – and select the rebel recipients. France’s Francois Hollande used this issue to even the score for Barack Obama’s lack of military support for his Mali expedition.

The Al Qaeda group which seized hostages from 10 nations at the remote Algerian gas field in In Aminas Wednesday, Jan. 16, has addressed its first demand to the United States: The release of two American hostages for two high-profile Islamist terrorists jailed in the US: Egyptian Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Blind Sheikh convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Pakistani-American neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, convicted for trying to kill US troops and FBI agents in Afghanistan in 2009. Algerian forces still battle terrorists holed up with hostages..

Sources close to the French Defense Ministry reported Friday, Dec. 7, that a Western-Arab military intervention against the Assad regime will begin shortly with the participation of the US, France, Britain, Turkey, Jordan and other anti-Assad Arab nations, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar. debkafile: French and British warships have joined the USS Eisenhower carrier off Syria. The mission would combine an air blitz and special operations forces on the ground for wiping out Assad’s chemical arms stocks, air force and air defense batteries.

The first week of October is the latest agreed timeline for a US-Israeli decision to strike Iran because after that it will be too late. Iran’s nuclear breakout is now counted in weeks, nuclear diplomacy has fallen through and President Obama is closer than ever before to a decision. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources add that France has also begun transferring special forces to its UAE bases and Britain is completing preparations for deploying large ground, naval and air forces to Kuwait.

The US has confirmed the supply of weapons to the Syrian rebels and the presence of CIA officers controlling the flow from Turkey. However plans for persuading Bashar Assad to quit run hard up against his gains on the battlefield where the rebels, despite broad backing, are losing ground.

British and German brokers were asked to assure Moscow that military intervention in Syria is not planned now, but that Alawites will never stand up to Assad move him aside unless they see the rebels adequately armed for vanquishing his army. Moscow must therefore accept this.

A senior official in Tokyo announced Wednesday, May 23, that the Japanese government will seek parliamentary approval for a bill allowing Japanese firms to insure tankers carrying Iranian oil to Asia if European insurers refused to do so. The nuclear talks between the six powers and Iran in Baghdad Wednesday, instead of taking place under the shadow of tougher sanctions as Israel expected, saw the toughest one, the oil embargo, falling apart. Russian and British officials began raising the prospect of an Iran-Israel war.

Two stalwarts of the Western confrontation against a nuclear-armed Iran suffered election defeats this week: Nicolas Sarkozy was swept out of the Elysee by the Socialist leader Francois Hollande Sunday, May 6. Three days earlier, the two parties forming UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s government coalition were trounced in local elections across Britain. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who faces an election in four months, never imagined he would so soon be left on shifting sands against the Iranian nuclear threat.

Military preparations for intervention in the horrendous Syrian crisis are quietly afoot in Washington, Paris, Rome, London and Ankara. President Barack Obama is poised for a final decision after the Pentagon submits operational plans for protecting Syrian rebels and beleaguered populations, debkafile reports. The deaths of two notable journalists helped galvanize the West into action. They died after Syrian artillery located their secret press center in Homs with the help of Russian spy satellites or Iranian electronic measures - and gutted it.

Israel and Britain are not on the same page, but both are smearing Iran for their own reasons: Netanyahu is concerned that sanctions against Iran will boost its urge to attack Israeli targets abroad, while the British fear the London Olympics of July 2012 will be targeted for joint Iranian-al Qaeda attacks.

US, Russian, French and British air and naval forces are gathering around the Syrian and Iranian coasts on guard for fresh developments at the two Middle East flashpoints. The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov put in earlier than planned at Syria's Tartus port Sunday, Jan. 8, together with two more Russian warships. British and French naval craft head to the Persian Gulf, while the giant US RQ-4 Global Hawk drone has begun monitoring Iranian coastlines from the USS Stenning aircraft carrier.

Iran has crossed another red line in its drive for a nuclear weapon with the announcement Sunday, Jan. 8 that the underground uranium enrichment site at Fordo near Qom goes on stream soon. debkafile's military sources: 60 percent enriched uranium can be produced at this facility - just one step before weapons grade. Israel has warned that once Fordo is operational, Iran's nuclear bomb program will be immune to attack and hidden from Western surveillance. US and Israel launch military deployment.

Britain's seemingly tough steps Wednesday, Nov. 30 - expeling Iranian diplomats from London and closing the UK embassy in Tehran - stopped well short of punishment for their government's action in loosing a student mob against the embassy, debkafile notes. To really hurt Tehran, UK Prime Minister David Cameron would have shut down Iran's English-language Press TV and World Office of Islamic Guidance, Iran's most influential anti-West propaganda machines in the English language. The German, French, Dutch ambassadors are recalled.

British government ministers have been told to expect Israeli military action in the wake of the UN watchdog report "as early as Christmas or very early in the new year," the London Daily Mail reported Thursday, Nov. 10. They were told Israel would strike Iran's nuclear sites "sooner rather than later" – with "logistical support" from the US. A major US concern is said to be that a nuclear-armed Iran would spur Saudi Arabia and Turkey into developing their own weapons.